sthenic old use

But in waking life I ignored the implications of such a 'sthenic spur', and continued to deny its existence.

"Sthenic," that's what her ex-lover the medic had called her.

Not fat, not too lean, fairly sthenic.

Later he also discovered a way in which to sublimate, or the increase in dynamic power, of medicines (cf. Brown's sthenic enhancement).

It is, I believe, this same 'sthenic spur,' or determination to survive as a self-defined individual, which causes the anorexic to reject suicide - another form of surrender - and to choose the more arduous life of self-starvation, not in order to die, but in order to live and go on living.